By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections is a thought-provoking work for researchers as well as advanced students of sociolinguistic methods and theory. Edited by Carmen Fought, this is a collection of papers first presented at the 1999 Claremont College sociolinguistic methods conference held in honor of sociolinguistic pioneer, Ronald Macaulay.

Fought brings together a diverse body of work from several of the top contemporary sociolinguists. In her introduction, she states the book's common theme: "the critique of conventional wisdom in the sociolinguistic study of variation and the extension of important concepts in variationist research to new areas" (3). All of the authors pull from a variety of important sociolinguistic studies to introduce discussions that not only question traditional ideas, theories, and terminology, but also reanalyze older studies through new perspectives and promote underutilized methods of analysis.

The book is organized into several sections. The front material includes a Series Editors' Preface by Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski, an Editor's Preface, a list of contributors, and a table of contents. After an introductory chapter, there are ten chapters, divided into four parts: "Sociolinguistic Methods," "The Exploration of Place," "Influences on Adult Speech," and "Attitudes and Ideologies." Each chapter includes its own notes and reference sections.

SYNOPSIS

Part I: "Sociolinguistic Methods"In Chapter 1, "Some Sources of Divergent Data in Sociolinguistics," Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery give an intriguing, well-organized critique of traditional analytical methods in sociolinguistics. The authors claim that the early focus on methodology in quantitative sociolinguistics has fallen off in the last 20 years and argue that divergent data in sociolinguistic studies can be traced back to methodological differences. Using a variety of well-documented studies, Bailey and Tillery give several specific examples of such methodological differences, focusing their discussion on interviewer effects (including interviewer characteristics such as race, as well as the "Rutledge Effect"), sampling effects (including both sampling procedures and populations), and the effects of analytical strategies (by comparing studies of habitual and invariant BE in African American English). The authors call for a more stringent, focused approach to data collection and analysis in order to conduct significant research that is reliable and generalizable. They conclude that "disentangling the effects of our methods from the effects of social and linguistic factors with some certainty is perhaps the most important thing we can do to build upon the solid foundation laid by first generation sociolinguists" (28).

Chapter 2, "Ordinary Events" by William Labov, is an interesting reminder that there are more analytical methods available to sociolinguists than the usual, more traditional quantitative techniques. Using data from Macaulay (1987), Labov looks into the analysis of narratives, with a specific focus on quoted exchanges and reconstructed conversation. Labov seems especially interested in the reporting of "ordinary events," those events not reportable themselves and not required to explain key events. He also asks, "If a narrative is an account of what actually happened, why do we find clauses dealing with what did not happen?" (41). Labov concludes that the focus on ordinary events actually slows down the narrative, thus presenting the story more as a film than literature. In reading this chapter, one can easily see how such a technique would give a new perspective to the examination of a sociolinguistic interview.

In Chapter 3, Natalie Schilling-Estes argues for "Exploring Intertextuality in the Sociolinguistic Interview." She defines "intertextuality" as "the interweaving of remembered utterances" and gives a quick, yet detailed background into its use in linguistic analysis (44). Shilling-Estes then shows that it is a natural progression to incorporate an exploration of intertextuality within the analysis of a sociolinguistic interview, as it has been used effectively in discourse analysis for some time. She also discusses that an examination of intertextuality in language variation studies actually forces one to question even the most basic assumptions of sociolinguistic research. For example, she points out that intertextuality is most likely to occur at the times in an interview when the focus is on the most vernacular forms; therefore, making the researcher question whether or not the speaker's voice is actually his own. Like Labov's chapter, I find Shilling-Estes' work motivating in that it promotes the adoption of techniques utilized by other disciplines into variationist research.

Part II: "The Exploration of 'Place'" In Chapter 4, "Place, Globalization, and Linguistic Variation," Barbara Johnstone argues that "sociolinguists may have not always been sufficiently attuned to the social theory implicit in our uses of terms such as 'region', 'rurality,' 'local,' and 'place'" (78). She begins by discussing place as location as well as place as meaning, and argues that place can (and should) be viewed as a socially constructed category in sociolinguistic research. She also asserts that "individuals ground their identities in socially constructed regions" (70). Therefore, according to Johnstone, sociolinguists must study place and region from the local point of view in order to discover how an area is culturally defined, as well as to elicit what linguistic features are meaningful within that particular locale. As place "is one of the most frequently adduced correlates of linguistic variation," including a study of these self-defined, "vernacular" dialects is therefore a necessary component to any complete sociolinguistic study (70).

A "remnant dialect" is defined as "a variety of language that retains vestiges of earlier language varieties that have receded among speakers in the more widespread population" (84). In Chapter 5, "The Sociolinguistic Construction of Remnant Dialects," Walt Wolfram discusses the history, development, and significance of remnant dialects and historically isolated speech communities. He points out that even so-called relic dialects go through change and warns that "the real methodological and descriptive challenge for the study of remnant dialects is, in fact, sorting out the layers of founder effects and distinguishing instances of conservatism from innovation" (94). He ends the chapter by delineating the sociolinguistic principles present in the configuration of isolated dialects: dialect exclusion, selective change, regionalization, social marginalization, vernacular congruity, peripheral community heterogeneity, and localized identity. Overall, Wolfram presents some very compelling ideas which ask the reader to rethink and reconsider several questions about dialects and communities which have often been disregarded or taken for granted.

The discussion of place is continued through Chapter 6, "Variation and a Sense of Place," by Penelope Eckert. In this chapter, Eckert argues that "linguists should be focusing not on centers but on borders - that we should move from a linguistics of community to a linguistics of contact" (108). She reminds the reader that boundaries are artificial, and she states that "more things are happening that are inseparable from what happens on either side" of an area's borders (108). I find this chapter (along with Johnstone's piece) to be a much-needed discussion on the nature of place, as it is often assumed in sociolinguistic studies that places (especially regions) and their boundaries are concrete entities that can be defined by those on the outside. Eckert ends the chapter on a general methodological note (after all, this was first presented at a methods conference), calling for a continued discussion and critique of sociolinguistic methodology.

Part III: "Influences on Adult Speech"In Chapter 7, "Adolescents, Young Adults, and the Critical Period: Two Case Studies from 'Seven Up,'" Gillian Sankoff presents a discussion of apparent time versus age grading. Using Macaulay's 1977 study as an example, she argues that apparent time does not always work as a valid analysis. She then turns to present a detailed look at a real-time study of two phonological variables (broad A and short U) using data from two speakers (Neil and Nicholas) from the film series "Seven Up." Sankoff presents an unique dataset in that the films show interviews of the boys every seven years between ages 7 and 35. She gives a detailed discussion of the use and disuse of the two variables between the two speakers, as well as the social factors that influence their linguistic decisions. However, her conclusion focuses on the study's methodological implications, stating that apparent time research, while not always reliable on its own, is able to guide longitudinal studies.

Dennis Preston, in "Three Kinds of Sociolinguistics: A Psycholinguistic Perspective" (Chapter 8), presents to the reader his interpretation of the three levels of variationist sociolinguistics. He defines Level I as that research which only correlates linguistic and social factors, and he claims that this type of sociolinguistic study is very rare. Level II studies, which he states are quite common, seek "influencing factors among (not outside) the components of a grammar" (147). Finally, Level III studies "relate patterns of linguistic change to both the sociocultural forces studied in Level I and the linguistic forces of Level II" (151). I especially like Preston's presentation of the term "postvernacular" in reference to the language or linguistic features one learns after his or her initially-acquired linguistic form. Preston goes on to argue that no one will be as fluent in their postvernacular, a thought that, as he states, brings up interesting implications for the Chomskian view of an ideal speaker-hearer.

Part IV: "Attitudes and Ideologies"Chapter 9, "Language Ideologies and Linguistic Change" by Lesley Milroy, is an intriguing chapter that presents "a framework for incorporating into mainstream variationist work an account of language attitudes" (161). Milroy argues that sociolinguists should be concerned with how ideologies interact with internal linguistic constraints, and she focuses her discussions specifically on the ideology of a Standard English. She points out that most variationist work uses a standard as a default reference point, which she problematizes by saying, "scholars imbue their sociolinguistic analyses with unintended ideological significance when they focus on the characteristics of some variety by comparing it with a supposedly neutral standard" (165). Furthermore, Milroy claims that "an ideologically oriented account of language variation and change treats members of speech communities as agents, rather than as automatons caught up ineluctably in an abstract sociolinguistic system" (167).

In Chapter 10, "The Radical Conservatism of Scots," Ronald Macaulay asserts that "the differences between Scottish English and English English are great enough to play a key role in the sense of Scottish identity, " a claim contrary to the findings of other researchers (178). Working with data from approximately 200 interviews, Macaulay argues that "Scots speakers are more or less unanimous in the belief that what distinguishes the Scots from the English is the way they speak" (179). He concludes that the Scots, through their speech and stories (i.e. in message as well as form) show themselves to be independent and secure and therefore do not see a need to switch to a more dominant form of speech.

Chapter 11, "Spoken Soul: The Beloved, Belittled Language of Black America" by John R. Rickford is an adapted version of the first chapter of his co-authored book Spoken Soul (Rickford and Rickford 2000). Rickford claims that this is the way he really wanted the first chapter to read and has included here passages the editor took out as well as new insights (198). Having read Spoken Soul, I found it interesting to read the numerous quotations that this version includes and to be able to compare both versions. For those who have not read the other version, this chapter works as a good introduction to Rickford's views on a variety of issues surrounding African American English. While I find the chapter quite interesting and useful, it does stand out from the rest of the book as something altogether different. Simply, it appears to be added as an afterthought to a series of papers that are more theoretically and methodologically driven.

EVALUATION

Overall, I found Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections to be an intelligent discussion of many of the overlooked issues and questions that have developed in contemporary sociolinguistics. As Fought states in the introduction, this is a book that "engages the reader in dialogue, challenges assumptions, and unveils new perspectives" (3). While some of the chapters are stronger than others, each author does a good job reaching this objective. The book covers a wide variety of specific topics, and each reader will take from it something different, depending on his or her own research interests.

This book allows (or at times even forces) one to question many of the assumptions and traditions of variationist sociolinguistics. As such, it would be especially useful for initiating conversation and debate among graduate students and colleagues.

The main critique I have of this book is with its organization. While the variety of topics is intriguing, in many ways the considerable differences in focus of the individual chapters made the book as a whole seem less cohesive and somewhat disorganized. Some of the four internal sections were more unified than others, and the titles of the sections were not always the best fit for categorizing the chapters within. I think one valuable addition would have been a concluding chapter to wrap up the core issues and end on a more cohesive note. However, this does not take away from the usefulness of the book, which I know I will refer back to often.

Rickford, John R. and Russell J. Rickford. (2000). Spoken Soul: the story of black English. New York: Wiley.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Susan Tamasi is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Emory University. Her primary research is in language variation, investigating issues of linguistic security and non-expert perceptions of American English.